Kamna Gupta is a French-born conductor whose work spans operatic, orchestral, and choral repertoire. She is a recipient of 2026 Solti Foundation Career Assistance Award and an American Prize winner. This summer, Gupta joins Santa Fe Opera as cover conductor in the American premiere of Tobias Picker’s Lili Elbe. During the 2026-2027 season, Gupta will continue opera and concert work: she will conduct The Importance of Being Earnest at Chicago Opera Theater, she returns to Washington National Opera to lead their AOI Initiative, and she will also be a guest conductor for New England Conservatory's production of Xerxes. On the concert side, she returns as a guest conductor with the Manhattan School of Music and cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic. Additionally, she is the newly-appointed the Associate Conductor of Protestra, an activist orchestra in New York City that advocates for humanitarian causes through music, and will conduct several concerts with the orchestra this season.

 

Recent operatic engagements include debuts with Vancouver Opera (Les Pêcheurs de Perles), Madison Opera (Maria de Buenos Aires), and Highlands Opera Studio (The Merry Widow), as well as leading the creation of a reduction of Poul Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale at The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. A champion for new music, Gupta has conducted several world premieres at Spoleto Festival USA (Ruinous Gods, 2024), the Glimmerglass Festival (Jungle Book in 2022 and The Rip Van Winkles in 2023), and Los Angeles Opera (In Our Daughter’s Eyes, 2022). She also took The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist to the Lincoln Center Summer for the City Festival in 2024, after music directing and conducting its world premiere and tour in 2022. In addition to her performance work, she is regularly invited to workshop new operas with American Lyric Theater and Beth Morrison Projects, including Jorge Sosa’s Ofrenda and Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Hildegard, for which she served as the Associate Conductor during the premiere at the Los Angeles Opera in 2025. 

 

Other recent highlights include leading the Trinity Church Wall Street Choirs and NOVUS in Luna Pearl Woolf's oratorio Number Our Days as part of the inaugural season at the Perelman Performing Arts Center; conducting Rocking Horse Winner with Tapestry Opera in 2024, which was also recorded and later featured on CBC Music's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera; leading La Calisto with Mannes Opera from the harpsichord; conducting several concerts with the International Contemporary Ensemble featuring works by Suzanne Farrin and Du Yun; and five seasons with the Glimmerglass Festival. She has served as cover conductor with Washington National Opera (world premiere of Songbird) and Atlanta Opera (Candide, for which she was also chorus master). 

 

Active internationally, Gupta’s orchestral credits include performances in France, Germany, Russia, and the Czech Republic. Among these engagements, leading the Leipzig Barockorchester in an all-Bach program was a special highlight. Other engagements include Seattle Opera, the Royal Opera in Versailles, American Lyric Theater, Sarasota Opera, and Opera Saratoga. In 2026, she was one of three conductors invited to conduct in a masterclass led by Fabio Luisi and the International Conductors Guild. She has also participated in masterclasses with Stéphane Dénève, Mark Stringer, and Tito Muñoz. 

 

Gupta’s passion for education and community-building has also led her to work with outreach departments at the New York Philharmonic and the Castleton Festival. Gupta holds a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from Arizona State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Music, cum laude, from Princeton University. Currently based in New York City, she is also active as a coach and harpsichordist.

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